There’s a risk to rebranding and renaming a company that’s been around for nearly 20 years. But Javelin Logistics Corp., which was Power Freight Systems up until April 1, says its new name better embodies what the specialized transport and logistics company offers to customers.

“A javelin is on target, on point, streamlined, athletic,” said Malcolm Winspear, president and CEO of Javelin, based in Newark, Calif., with its newest facility in Valencia. “Power Freight Systems,” on the other hand, is left over from a time when transport and logistics was not the multifaceted industry it is today.

“The word ‘freight’ sort of creates a connotation of just truckers,” said Winspear, who had started brainstorming the rebranding in 2004, when he joined the company. “And we run trucks, too, obviously, but it’s not the image I wanted our organization to have.”

Javelin Logistics started as Power Freight in 1996, focusing on airfreight services for aerospace, automotive and semiconductor firms, mostly in the Silicon Valley. From then to now, the company has expanded to order fulfillment, warehousing and inventory management and returns processing.

The company makes 30,000 to 40,000 shipments annually for customers and manages about 800,000 total square feet of distribution space.

Javelin Logistics created its niche with industries that had special shipping needs — overnights, sensitive and specially shaped packages. The small packages they leave to FedEx, Winspear said.

“We’re kind of a specialized logistics services provider,” Winspear said. “If they need to move stuff quickly or have special requirements — fragile, special — all those things fall beneath our bailiwick.”

The company’s technology systems are also being revamped, particularly its transportation-management system, or TMS, and a warehouse-management system developed in-house.

Clients will be able to use the Web-based TMS to track its inventory, and it can be tweaked to track what the particular client cares most about getting updates on. The warehouse management system will more efficiently run the inventories within the warehouses, Winspear said.

In addition to the rebranding, Javelin Logistics is settling into its first year in a 58,000-square-foot Valencia facility on Avenue Williams, which is its conduit to a new Southern California market that hasn’t yet been tapped by the company that focused on the Pacific Northwest, Winspear said.

The expansion transpired when an Oregon-based client inquired about Javelin’s ability to also do the logistics and transport for its manufacturing site in Camarillo. Winspear said the company took the opportunity to expand south and opened the Valencia facility in June 2011.

“It was a logical extension anyway,” he said. “We jumped on it.”

The Valencia expansion is the first since 2008, when Javelin Logistics opened a location in Austin, Texas. (It has since moved that location into a larger facility.) In 2004, the company expanded into Oregon, where it has Hillsboro and Portland locations.

Valencia was the practical location in Southern California because it allowed for transport from San Francisco to get offloaded and organized in the Valencia warehouse “before the maze of traffic” in the greater Los Angeles area, Winspear said. Valencia is also about 50 miles from the client’s manufacturing site in Camarillo.

Four employees work in the Valencia facility, which handles the Oregon-based client, and the Javelin has since added eight new Southern California clients, Winspear said.

Because of the current economy, when Javelin Logistics opened up in Valencia, it “went into it knowing that it’s going to be a little bit of a slow startup,” Winspear said. But the company expects its niche services will appeal to more companies in the near future. As Javelin is accredited as a Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism partner, it appeals particularly to companies that need logistics through the ports of Long Beach and L.A. and out of the country through LAX.

“It’s just a question of finding those customers that appreciate the value of what we can provide,” Winspear said. “We’re just now getting to a point where we can say, ‘Let’s go out and see if we can do some really great things.’”

Javelin Logistics is located at 28945 N. Ave. Williams in Valencia and can be contacted at 661-775-1880. More information can be found online at www.javelinlogistics.com.